lookin

Tell me that's not a banana he's got in there!

You get your wish. And mine. He's staying in. The walk back I'm looking forward to is from all those Republicans who lambasted him in the past two days. Something tells me they will be tiptoeing very gingerly back to full support, rather than let the Senate seat go to a Democrat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Apparently, a bit more to this than meets the eye. According to Missouri law, if Akin exits the race by 5:00pm tomorrow, he can be replaced by another candidate. The Missouri Republican party would then have two weeks to name a replacement, and the replacement would have to file within twenty-eight days of Akin's exit. Without a special court order, if Akin doesn't bow out by tomorrow at 5:00pm, he remains the Republican candidate, complete with all his baggage. Seems that's why he's under such intense pressure to bow out at once. The head of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee called him today to say the Committee was pulling the $5 million budgeted for the Missouri race. And every Republican with a bullhorn seems to be aiming it in his direction. Akin says he's sticking with it. Interesting to see what happens next. Guess we won't have long to wait.

Hell, all the testosterone around here tonight, I bet you could plug up Joan Rivers!

And perhaps not too shabby from the get-go. Hey, Brutus! Hope you packed the sheepskin.

So, listen, Doctor, could you leave a little extra on the top and sides.

Having never won the lottery, I've spent plenty of time thinking about what I'd do if I did. First off, I'd give ninety percent of it away, some to friends and relatives, but most to charities. I'd probably turn it over to Jimmy Carter. He'd see it gets put to good use. Then I'd put the other ten percent in a fairly safe income-producing fund and draw a check every month. I'd try to spend it as fast as it came in and do stuff with my friends. Whatever there was in the kitty would get spent pretty quick. A crook would have to arrive at exactly the right moment to make off with the whole monthly stipend. And then I'd scrape by till the next month's check came in. Both in good times and not-so-good times, I've long taken to heart Thoreau's words: A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. If I ever had so much money left over that it gave me aggravation, I'd start giving more away till it didn't.

Suckrates, you speak of a world that I would really like to see. Not that we humans won't always be interested in who's boinking whom, but I'm thinking of a world where a more varied menu of sexual partners becomes fairly common. Fr'instance, I think it would be kind of hot if Lautner dated a girl and a boy - or two. In fact, do you think we might have the makings of a new breakout film for our young star?

AdamSmith has several things That sometimes get him down: Hubbard, Paul, and Constantine, And Helen Gurley Brown.

I learned that, as soon as one Benjamin Nicholas thread dies down, OZ will start up another one.

In the age of shorthand texting and auto-correcting software, I don't think spelling is as important as it was in my salad days. Back then, it wasn't as hard to separate the well-educated from the not-so-well-educated, and most folks put some effort into placing in the top half. These days, the standards are much more relaxed and I don't view spelling errors the same way I did then. That said, thanks to luv2play, I'm reading Smart Aleck by Howard Teichmann, erstwhile English professor at Barnard College, and was rather proud of myself for spotting a spelling error on page 42. Granted, it was merely the use of 'then' instead of 'than' but, still, the book was published by William Morrow & Company, Inc., who should have been able to spring for a good proofreader to cover for any of Teichmann's own oversights. Apparently, Woollcott himself was no stranger to misspelling when he was a young 'un, yet went on to found the Algonquin Round Table where a goodly share of the early twentieth-century literati rested on their laurels at one time or another. So there's always hope. On balance, I'd have to say that there are qualities more important to me than an escort's spelling abilities. As long as I can find something that looks like the word 'hung' somewhere in the ad, I'm a happy camper.

Perhaps OZ could get a deal on the website.

I think TY's concept is spot on, and the execution is good except perhaps for the guy on the left. He looks a smidge too Stanley Ipkiss for my taste.

Given the never-ending tsuris that dogged Poe throughout his life, I'm surprised his characters got off as easy as they did. With consumption taking his beloved wife (his cousin whom he met when she was nearly nine and married four years later), he was unable to escape his demons even through drink, as a single glass of wine or weak cider was enough to get him snockered. Unable to hold a job for long, he lived well below the poverty line nearly every year of his adult life and his family eventually tired of bailing him out. He wrote in the days before copyright law, with the initial payment for a poem or story usually all he ever got. Others, though, did profit from his work. According to one article, here's Poe's take for a number of his best pieces: MS. Found in a Bottle - $50 (a prize, not a payment) Ligeia - $10 The Haunted Palace - $5 The Fall of the House of Usher - $24 William Wilson - $50 The Murders in the Rue Morgue - $56 The Masque of the Red Death - $12 The Tell-Tale Heart - $10 The Black Cat - $20 The Gold-Bug - $100 (a prize, not a payment, and likely Poe's largest haul) The Purloined Letter - $12 The Raven - $9 (Earning him a fraction of what he made on The Gold-Bug, Poe wrote, “The bird beat the bug, though, all hollow.”) The Cask of Amontillado - $15 Ulalume - $20 Eureka - $14 (an advance, and probably all he ever got) The Bells - $45 Annabel Lee - $10 Frankly, had it been me, I doubt any of my characters would have endured less than getting their kishkas wound around a windlass. (Actually, poor St. Elmo, pictured above, blazed that trail, also enduring other defilements that are best discovered on an empty stomach.)

So how come I always have to wear the collar?

The Marque of the 1%

The good news is that this happened five years ago and, from the guy's recent posts on Reddit, he's doing fine. More, I'm sure, than can be said for his father.

Perhaps it was OZ working on his new new website.

According to this article, many Republican governors are refusing to set up the on-line insurance exchanges that will allow folks to start shopping for competitively priced health insurance, and to see if they qualify for financial aid. The exchanges are part of the Affordable Healthcare Act and are scheduled to be up and running by next October. Fortunately, the Obama administration is not sitting idly by and is hard at work creating a federal exchange for those who won't have access to a state exchange. It will be ready right on schedule. Of course, the Republicans are crying foul and complaining that such a federal exchange can't offer any subsidies in their states, preferring that their less wealthy folks just go without insurance entirely. Wrong again, say the feds. The federal exchange, and the subsidies, will be ready and available to all, right on schedule. Unless, of course, ex-Governor Romney manages to get himself elected President and makes good on his promise to repeal the national healthcare program which is largely based on the one he implemented in Massachusetts. Could the Republicans get any nuttier?

From the ALEC article: In 2012, Walter Mondale, former Democratic Vice President of the United States, and Arne Carlson, former Republican governor of Minnesota, referred in an op-ed piece to the political activities of the Koch family and ALEC, saying: "[ALEC] is the creation of the Koch brothers who amassed their fortunes in oil and who live in Florida. The goal of ALEC is to influence legislators across the nation." Journalist John Nichols opined in The Nation that the Koch brothers have provided funding to ALEC for "decades" in a "savage assault on democracy".

Thought this would be another run-of-the-mill whackjob until I got to the end of the article and the reference to his membersip in ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, allegedly spawned by the Koch Brothers. An eyepopping read.

Namaste. No sir, the Benjamin Nicholas thread is no longer in the cloud. In fact it is high above. Mr. OZ has most urgently requested that it be placed somewhere near Uranus. Yes, please do have a nice day.

Naturally modest growth is my preference. If I'm feeling unusually hirsutophilic, I can always shlep along a merkin.

Just picked up Smart Aleck today. Thanks. I'll read the Vicountess' book too if I stumble across it. My latest book was an old one on computer history. I like reading about the early computers, the ones that used vacuum tubes and were strung together with baling wire. I can understand those. They lost me when they started putting everything inside a little black chip with legs.

Not sure if this one's official.